Robin Forlonge Patterson (1940)/autobiography
Much more detail than in the head article. ---- :Early versions are on the /previous versions/ subpage. (Placenames are all New Zealand except where otherwise indicated, because I have never been out of the country): First my OldFriends profile (Just before that site closed in January 2016) 75 years old and living in Wellington. Spent 13 years as editor/proofreader with Brookers Ltd (a Thomson Company - now Thomson-Reuters) in central Wellington. Living since 1971 at Plimmerton, one of the lovely northern suburbs of the amazing Porirua City. Wife (still with me) and two adult children (boy an airline captain living in Hamilton; girl a former sales manager with Wellington Rugby, now a licensed real state salesperson, married and living 15 minutes' drive south of Plimmerton). Cat. Trees. Sea views. Computer games by Sid Meier and his successors (and some online games that used to take up far too much time) and some excellent imitators. Genealogy. Promoting free websites. Getting my name on this sort of website (which is the 5th or 6th I have seen devoted to NZ - but some have died or merged). Spent hundreds of hours helping to improve what was one of the world's most widely used Web directories at www.zeal.com, mainly in the genealogy and New Zealand categories. Recently also Wikipedia, with over a year on the Maori language version, mi.wikipedia.org, and several branches of Wikia.com, notably genealogy and newzealand.wikia.com. See http://www.webspawner.com/users/robinfpatterson for more autobiography. Find me on Facebook, Multiply, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Squidoo if you want an easier place to talk. The photo is "North Island Robin". :Notes to the above: "Multiply" closed while I was offline for a few months in 2012; Squidoo was absorbed into HubPages; son moved to Auckland and loves it; daughter and family moved to Palmerston North (which means less grandparent duty). Now set the scene with my parents: Education detail Primary *A few days at somewhere (South/Central Otago). There was a McCorkindale family. *1946 (starting 11 March - delay because of polio epidemic) Primers 1 to 4 at Kaikorai (Dunedin); unable to read a thing when I started; by the end of the year I had progressed so well that I was helping new entrants with their reading (in a corner behind the piano?) *1947-48 A few days at Kaikorai in Standard 1, then off to Orawia in Western Southland - two-classroom school (closed some years ago), in a settlement that then had a railhead (mostly, I imagine, for transporting lime from Clifden, a locality a little way to the west); my first rugby game and my first (shared?) horse ride *1949-52 Kaikorai (particularly remembering teacher Hugh A Thomson and watching the Highgate Bridge being built); parts of the playground had (and maybe still have) small holes close to the stone foundations, ideal for marbles games; there was a playshed near the southern corner, where I remember a group of us were assembled once (presumably near the end of Standard 4 or Form I) and urged not to go to an intermediate school *1951, winter interlude at Roxburgh Health Camp for 3 months; censorship was the order of the day: after my best friend at health camp, Raymond, fell off a rock and broke his wrist and got sent home I was not allowed to report that in my weekly letter home *1953 Dunedin North Intermediate (at the old Albany St site) for a sort of social catch-up year repeating Form II. Met Evan Jamieson, sitting beside him for much of the time. He ended up as dux. I became very fond of Diane Jeavons, a lawyer's daughter, and acquainted with a sister of the later famous Alison Holst. Secondary and beyond ;1954-58 Otago Boys’ High School :Drama Club, including at least one production that also involved my friend who became Sir William Southgate; tried hard in the gym but sprained my neck coming off the parallel bars the wrong way; Prefect in final year; Chess Club - 1958 joint Otago/Southland Schoolboys chess champion; Orderly Under-Officer in the military cadets (after dear old Norm Wilson taught me how to salute when I was the office junior as a 4th-former); Inter-school Latin Reading Prize (and second in the corresponding French contest, beaten by Margaret Hercus, who later became a good friend and a bit of a heart-throb); several literary works published in the school magazine, including the poetic "A World of Sand", which had gained 20/20 from the English master, Oliver Gordon Cox (dear old "Queenie"); Dux (and leader of the haka party that congratulated the OGHS dux at their prizegiving); Crusader badge-holder. Regrettably, Evan Jamieson's family had moved to Palmerston North after a couple of years. ;1958-59 summer, private tutorials with an academic friend :an introduction to German because of my leaning towards a languages degree (but I never really caught up) ;1959-62 Otago University :BA, with A passes in Latin 1 and French 1, finishing with French 3 and - second-time-round - German 3; Dramatic Soc (which included a trip to Palmerston North playing opposite Margaret Hercus in Pinter's The Room); Hockey Club (until my left knee started complaining); Student Christian Movement (one year on Exec, unsuccessful nominee for President the following year, and continued attendance at camps for several years) ;1963-71 survey cadetship :N & E S Paterson Ltd, Rattray Street, Surveyors and Engineers, managed by Kenneth Walter Paterson (and Real Estate Agents - plus sharebroker and sometime mayor James Barnes - in the downstairs part of the business managed by Murray Cavan Paterson), leading to qualification as Registered Surveyor (with considerable help from Julie for the field work and transcription required near the end). See Employment section for more about that business. ;1970s TA101 (Transactional Analysis) : at Victoria University of Wellington, a weekend seminar/tutorial that Julie and I attended (probably because it was relevant to her eventual Dip.Soc.Wk.) Recreation etc Started collecting stamps at age 5. Never stopped. (Sorry, Julie!) Had elocution lessons for three terms, mostly with Kay Mutimer. Took part in Competitions Society speech sections, usually outclassed by Ivan Hannah and/or Ian Ralston, I think. They were held at Jubilee Hall in View Street, which much later featured on TV (ads and a documentary) after becoming a student flat. Later link with Jubilee Hall was the Scottish Country Dancing, which occupied later years of high school. Promoter Dave McKechie eventually said I was one of the best dancers in the province. Met Yvonne Jenkins, who lived in Cargill Street. Spent two years as a Boy Scout, passing all the Second Class tests and earning the First Class Knots and Lashings badge. Latterly a Patrol Leader with later-famous David Beatson as Second. 1957, wrote monthly column "The Stars in the Sky" for Dunedin's "Evening Star" daily newspaper. Thirty shillings a time. Mother helped with the pictures. Arthur Doig, chairman of the Dunedin Astronomical Society, had suggested I do it when I suggested to him that there should be local newspaper articles about astronomy. So I'm a retired part-time professional astronomer! I was Secretary and/or Treasurer of the society for three years and plotted the occasional chart of Dunedin's rising and setting times of sun, moon, and planets calculated from the Nautical Almanac. Appeared in over 110 performances of various plays for Rosalie and Patric Carey, mostly at their Globe Theatre in London Street, Dunedin, but a few were in the provincial towns; occasionally designed, hand-typeset, and printed the accompanying programmes. Rosalie's book includes me in a photo. Significant parts included Lucky in Waiting for Godot, Nagg in Endgame, and Ragnar Brovik in The Master Builder (opposite the lovely Maureen Edwards, who later married Peter Tulloch and turned out to be a distant cousin of mine, with Paterson ancestry from Angus). Active on committee of Dunedin North Branch of NZ Social Credit Political League, 1964-71 (which later became the Democratic Party and achieved a say in the Government as part of the Alliance in 1999). Probably would have been candidate in the 1972 elections if I had stayed in Dunedin. Joined St Martin Island Community and planted a few trees and designed a driveway. Played correspondence chess for a few years, in one of the middle grades of the NZCCA. Notable opponent was Arch Barrington of the Riverside Community in Nelson/Tasman. Participated in the chess group at the Porirua Recreation Centre from about 1976. Our team came second in the B grade in the year we were sufficiently organised to enter the Wellington area competitions. I remember we came home from Wellington or Wainuiomata one evening in frightful rain and our driver's windscreen wipers weren't working so I had to put an arm out to work them as we drove north. Later some of the high-school-age lads and I, all from Plimmerton and Paremata, held informal meetings at one another's homes for chess and other board games. Mostly at the home of Elliot Bugg of Taupo Creacent, whose parents were most hospitable, and whose young sister wasn't too much of a nuisance. Diplomacy was the main alternative to chess. Later my brother gave me his Diplomacy set after tiring of it. Who wants to dominate early 20th-century Europe without aircraft? Relatively late came my Wellington region Monopoly championship - late-1980s? Second place in the succeeding NZ championship game. Employment Various short stints in school and varsity holidays. At least one summer working as an office assistant at the HQ of Guthrie Bowron & Co, where Dad was company secretary. Became quite competent with the letter-folding machine and the monthly Reconciliation Statement. One or two summers in the Presbyterian Bookroom in the Octagon, where the boss grumbled because I spent too much time reading. One summer tending the garden at the OBHS hostel, Campbell House, with help from family. Two summer holidays at Dunedin Canning Company, which was in Maclaggan Street, mostly processing apricots from Central Otago into jam or canned halves in syrup. Girlfriend Rosalie Sutherland had worked there before and helped me get my first job there. "No canoodling in the corners", said the boss; he later encouraged me to keep up the supply of apricot boxes to the girls on the slicing line; his words were "Poke it into them, Robin!". Then the survey cadetship mentioned above, with N. @ E. S. Paterson. Familiarity with Dunedin streets and quite a lot of Central and South Otago, as the firm had branches at Balclutha and Queenstown. I think the surveying side of the firm is now called Pitts Paterson; Nigel Pitts and I (both ex-OBHS) got along very well. I designed Elliffe Place, Clayton Street extension, and a two-headed cul-de-sac at the north end of Waverley (which apparently gained congratulations from the City Council). I programmed the new electronic calculator, which was as big as a briefcase, cost about $4,000, and couldn't do trigonometrical functions automatically - how silly was that for a surveying firm? For a few years I earned a bit extra by doing the weekly floor-cleaning for the whole building. After move to Wellington, was lucky to get position as Planning Surveyor with Hutt County Council because of family friendship with former All Black then Councillor, the late lamented Ken Gray. That was January 1972 till March 1973 (my primary work being research towards a district scheme for the Taupo Riding, i.e. the Plimmerton-Paremata County Town), then on 1 April 1973 Plimmerton-Paremata merged into Porirua City after a democratic vote. Employed from 1973 to 1993 by Porirua City Council, mostly for the administration of applications for subdivision; eventually becoming Assistant Town Planner (and Chairman of the Staff Liaison Committee and a member of the committee that made delegated decisions on appeals against parking fines). In between subdivision oversight, I had written - yes, written - most of what became Porirua's first operative district plan under the Resource Management Act 1991. At my farewell, Malcolm Douglass told the assembled friends that I had saved the council a quarter of a million dollars by my foresight in successfully recommending that it buy the land that now leads from Parumoana Street to Te Whakawhitinga-o-Ngatitoa, the bridge heading north-east. Other legacies include: the Lagden Street reserve that would have been ordinary house sites if I had not pressed for some local recreation area; a shorter Kinloch Place than the developers wanted, because the council's landscape architect agreed with me that much of the threatened bush should become public reserve; an access way from the Greenacres School vicinity linking with an older subdivision to the northwest (after the developers put up a plan showing no link to an existing strip that was clearly planned to link to Greenacres). As part of the subdivision work, I proposed names for new streets (usually selected from a list submitted by the developers or the residents association); included was the subtle pun for Akeake Grove, close to the Takapuwahia Cemetery. Intelligence Officer for the Civil Defence side of the council's business, earning a week of training at Marton in the early 1980s. Active participant in two regional studies in about 1976 and 1980 - land use and transportation: WRLUTS; designed the north-west sector of the computer network for the second study. 1993: Eight months doing part-time door-to-door market research for AGB-McNair, in suburbs as far apart as Raumati South and Brooklyn. Also a one-day stint helping The Warehouse at Porirua with its stocktaking, and several mystery shopper assignments around Wellington and Porirua for a Christchurch firm (Huria Associates?). And a little gardening in the Horokiri Valley and some gorse-cutting close to home with a ferocious petrol-driven rotary-blade machine on fairly steep pasture above the Taupo Swamp. 1993-2007: Proofreader or Editor at what came to be called Brookers, law publishers, which was a family firm that became part of world-wide Thomson Organization (later Thomson-Reuters). Became Chief Warden and attended two Red Cross training seminars - echoes of my St John Ambulance cadetship many decades earlier in Roslyn, tutored by Mr Marychurch. Notable book productions that I had a large part in were a guide to local authority elections and a loose-leaf Resource Management; for both of those, regrettably, the bosses had overestimated market demand. A couple of proofreading contracts conducted by email after "retirement". Still open to offers! Computers and websites Bought Commodore 16 computer in the early 1980s and learned to program it in Commodore BASIC v 3.5. Improved several of the games and created new applications such as an arithmetic practice game and a program for converting contour maps to representations of photographs. Son Jonathan learned to type his name by using the computer. We went on to better and brighter PCs and discovered Civilization and related strategy games. I became fairly proficient at them and founded the Imperialism Game Wiki and a couple of wikis for Facebook games as well as making major contributions to civilization.wikia.com and playing thousands of hours of early Civilization-series games (probably pirated versions until they became abandonware) plus the latest versions of the free games Freeciv and C-evo with a little FreeCol. Created Plimmerton Community Website hosted by MyFamily.com. Created similar site for Brookers Second Floor Staff, which attracted more members than the official staff site. MyFamily.com later stopped hosting such sites. Involved in several serious websites by 2005, including Wikipedia and others mostly with a genealogical leaning. Discovered Wikia around 2004. Became an administrator on its central site and several others. One of my first fairly public creations was the text of Category:Browse on the Starter Pages Wikia, the first version of which (http://starter.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Browse?action=edit&oldid=1600) went like this: This is our top-level category. (Looking at it another way, it is our root category!) Ideally, every other category should be a subcategory of at least one other category, and every article should be in at least one category; many will fit well into two (eg location and subject-matter). A full list of existing categories can be found at . New categories are best created from below: just add category:categoryname to the article or category (after checking whether any existing category is suitable). Discussion of principles of categorisation/categorization may be found at project:categories. Miscellaneous My wedding in 1969 was the first time since 1934 that Dad and his five adult siblings had been together and was probably the last. Residence 1976-2016+: at 88 Motuhara Road, Plimmerton, Porirua City, WTN, NZ; robinp"at"xtra.co.nz or latterly robin-p"at"slingshot.co.nz; ph +64 4 233 8458. Julie and I designed the house and the then Lockwood contractor built it. Life Member of United Nations Assn of NZ and Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of NZ Inc. Spent 8 (not all consecutive) years on the committee of the Plimmerton School Parent-Teacher Association. ---- "CommunityNet Aotearoa is an internet resource supporting communities throughout Aotearoa New Zealand." Now try this next thing, which until recently (2012?) searched the Webspawner page and supposedly all the hundreds of pages it's linked to: Search this site powered by You may wish to contact the people who could let you have your own free site like this. My very computer-literate brother (who moved to Dixieland to marry his internet sweetheart, but that's another story) has one and recommended it. I'm happy with it (despite the unannounced maximum of 15,000 characters per page). Very easy to edit. And you can have any number, all linked. Get to Webspawner by clicking the name at the bottom of the page. Search My Family Tree Enter surname or surname, given Contributions to http://robinpatterson.wikispaces.com/ are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 License. Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 License; portions not contributed by visitors are Copyright 2014 Tangient LLC ---- Category:Autobiographies